Happy Friday! It is Results Day. I am so happy you stopped by.

Let’s jump right in! Here is the inspiration behind my CREATE A CHARACTER Activity sheet…

These are all items on my front porch. What sits on your porch?

So, why did I pull shapes from this familiar place? My activity sheets are built with things I spotted over the weekend and although we didn’t go anywhere or do anything terribly exciting, there was one moment I enjoyed especially. It was watching my kids play Frisbee in our teeny, tiny front yard. I sat on my bench with my tea and soaked the moment in (the diamond pattern belongs to our bench). On a normal day, my kids would most likely not be playing Frisbee together. Restrictions may be inhibiting us these days but they are also strengthening relationships.

Another item on my porch is an old kitty I received as a gift years ago. As you can see, it has unfortunately met some accidents while living the porch life. What I love about this statue the most is its’ smile. I can still see it during winter even when snow has toppled on it.

The potted plant picture is a sage plant my daughter is trying to grow. She named it Florence and is always checking on her health. I love hearing her reports.

As for the greens, we have bright jade ground-covering plants near our porch. Their clusters are captivating. I chose one of their petals to complete my sheet of four BLOBs.

I didn’t get to my pencil sketches until Wednesday this week. I was still coloring up last week’s characters which are now posted on Instagram.

When I sat down to create characters the theme that popped up was….playgrounds. Last weekend we had one lovely summer-like day and spent the afternoon driving around. Along the way, we drove past our children’s former elementary school playground. It was strange seeing it empty on a beautiful spring day! That image popped back up in my mind when it came time to create characters. The lack of play inspired me to dream up my own playground where kids could play.

Here is a BEFORE and AFTER look at designs..

and a time-lapse of my pen drawing.

Now, a closer look at my character transformation process…

BLOB #1 turned into a large lizard structure. Since the shape was bubbly, it reminded me of scales on a reptile. I needed some sort of feature kids could play on though so I decided to have lizard holding a climbing pole (maybe lizard could be climbed on too?) He was inspired by the green basilisk lizard. Introducing LIZARD’S POLE…

BLOB #2 turned into a tossing game kind of playground structure. It has a farm kind of feel and led me to wonder what do farm animals eat anyway?! Below is my FEED PIG tossing game. An alternative to basketball for the younger kiddos. I had to modify this shape quite a bit to work in the end.

BLOBS #3 was challenging even though it was so simple! Possibilities seemed to be endless (talking box, talking house, talking square, etc.) but having a playground theme helped me narrow my focus. Introducing the DIAMOND TREE play structure for kids...

Can you spot the design changes I made with my swing? My first sketch showed the swing gliding to the right but I experimented with a left swinging direction in my pen sketch. I liked the original best and stuck with that in the clean-up sketch.

The last BLOB was also challenging! My playground theme helped me focus again and I soon spotted a springy seat structure (which I learned is called a “spring rider”). My character looked like it could be the head of a dinosaur. After some quick research to find S named dinosaur types, BLOB #4 transformed into a SPRINGY SALTILLOMIMUS…

It was fun designing my playground characters, especially the kids that could play on them! I hope to add some color soon. Do you have a favorite? Let me know what it is!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you are staying healthy and keeping busy. If you notice interesting shapes this weekend, let me know!

See you on Monday!